Computer networks typically require a network administrator to view and manage networks and subnets. Managing computer networks, such as Internet Protocol (“IP”) networks include tasks over one or more network nodes. Frequently the administrator will create, edit and delete networks and subnets. Traditionally the administrator may use a table to keep track of more than one subnet, wherein the table includes each subnet's starting and ending addresses, and in some cases a subnet mask. A managed set of one or more networks may include many network nodes, for example, IP version 4 (“IPv4”) networks may include two to the power of 32 nodes, or over four billion nodes.
In many networks, network addresses are based in binary, but represented in decimal or dotted decimal notation. For example, in IPv4 node addresses are represented by four octets separated by dots: “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx”. This makes using a table to administer the network cumbersome as binary network addresses and representations, for example subnet masks, are not intuitive in decimal. If there are many subnets in a network, the table may be very long. There exists a need to view and manage networks and subnets using methods more efficient than a table.